


Starbird

by missmichellebelle



Series: Grey [1]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Star Wars Setting, Childhood Friends, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-09
Updated: 2016-01-09
Packaged: 2018-05-12 17:34:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5674630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/missmichellebelle/pseuds/missmichellebelle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He can feel when Eren is less of a star and more like a bird, fluttering in the depths of his bones and longing for freedom in a way that Levi never has.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Starbird

**Author's Note:**

> so I have been unable to focus on other projects lately because my love and obsession with Star Wars has become so vast and encompassing and I _knew_ this was coming sooner or later. here I plop into your laps another endless verse in which I will entertain myself.
> 
> a thousand and one thanks to the lovely [Ryssa](http://jedierenjaeger.tumblr.com), who was my Jedi Master through all of this, helping me pick a planet and make this authentic as I could. seriously, she got so many questions from her whee little Padawan, I was surprised I didn't drive her crazy. because the universe of Star Wars is incredibly vast, and I feel oh so very lost in it.
> 
> I am going to say the setting for this is just before, or concurrent, with Episode 7, but there are no spoilers for it whatsoever so no worries there. <3 the verse title is taken from the concept of the Grey Jedi, which I stumbled upon while working on this and instantly fell in love with, and the Starbird is the name for the Rebel Alliance/Resistance insignia. <3

Eren throws his helmet to the ground with aplomb, and it bounces on the decaying remains of the temple below their feet with the sort of crunching sound that never means good things. Levi’s boots come to rest beside it, but he stops short of picking it up. Unlike his sister, Levi stopped humoring Eren’s temper tantrums long ago.

“Every time!” Eren’s voice rings among the crumbling temple ruins around them, loud enough to disturb a perch of whisper birds into a streak of silent gold across the treetops. Levi watches them go, and then turns a resigned gaze in Eren’s direction.

“Are you done?” He asks, watching Eren pace back and forth, crushing vegetation under his heels, and Levi feels as if Eren’s frustration surges off of him and pools on the ground, lapping at his own ankles.

“I just—how?” Eren turns on him, and the frustration boils to anger, as pointed and fierce as a blaster aimed straight at Levi’s chest. “Have you been going out without me? Practicing?” Levi doesn’t even attempt a response, because he knows before he even opens his mouth that— “No, no, that can’t be it, that doesn’t make sense. None of this makes sense.” Eren drags his fingers through his hair and over his face, and the anger pops like a delicate soap bubble, and the taste it leaves on Levi’s tongue is just as bitter and unpleasant. “You’re just always going to be better than me, aren’t you?”

It’s not a question he’s expecting an answer to.

It’s not a question Levi ever plans on answering, anyway.

With a sigh, he dips down and picks up Eren’s discarded flight helmet, regarding it with probing fingers and detail-oriented eyes.

“You broke your ComTech again,” he says easily, skirting the open wound that is Eren’s pride that is suddenly between them. “And if you’re going to be such a sore loser, stop challenging me to games of chicken.” He tosses the helmet, and Eren catches it with all the reflexes expected of an up-and-coming star pilot. He’s a good pilot—a _great_ pilot, even—and an even better mechanic, but his reflexes have never been as good as Levi. When he dares them into a nose dive, or to aim their x-wings at one of the dozens of imposing temple walls that still stands, Eren always pulls up first. Always.

And Levi doesn’t know how to explain that he knows he can go further. That there is a trust in… in _something_ , something bigger than himself, something inside of himself, and he just… He knows. The same way he always seems to know where Eren is on this endless forest moon, which comes in handy, because Eren likes to get himself lost and not be found.

But it’s not something Levi has ever been able to explain to Eren.

When Eren asks him how he can push so far, how he can abandon all fear and risk his life, Levi doesn’t know how to tell him that is has nothing to do with that. That it’s all about knowing that he can. It’s not about abandoning fear—it’s about not having it in the first place.

“I’ll stop challenging you when I beat you,” Eren grumbles, already moving adept fingers along the inside of his helmet to try and accomplish a feat that can’t be done without the tools back at his “hideout,” which is just another word for one of the many moldy, abandoned temples that dot the surface of Yavin 4.

“So never?” Levi is just close enough when the words drip out of his mouth that Eren can reach out his stupidly long arm and give him a light, playful shove, accompanied with a snort and a laugh, and the spot that Eren takes up in the endless canvas that seems to span the entirety of Levi’s mind turns bright and warm and familiar again.

They amble their way up the moss-laden stones, throwing out hands to catch their balance on the purple bark of sapling Massassi trees pushing up through the ancient architecture. The saplings have been there their entire lives, and Levi is sure he will be long dead before they reach even a quarter the size of their relatives that blanket the planet and crowd close around the temples already. It’s not new to them—Eren’s curiosity and their X-wings helped them find anything new and interesting within a day’s journey of the colony—and yet Eren enters the temple with the same childish light in his eyes that he’s always held.

That’s how Levi knows he doesn’t have the same thing inside of him as Levi does. The thing that bleeds black around the edges more and more, making him wake from restless sleeps with no memory of the nightmare that caused it, making his heart feel heavier and heavier to the point where sometimes he has to physically rest, the weight it too much to bear. If Eren felt that, he would not have that light.

As much as Levi longs for him to understand, he would never want to snuff it out.

Eren taps a finger against a nebula blossom, and it pulls away from him, vine pulsing threatening, and Levi closes his eyes. Every breath he takes here feels so full of life, and pushes at the darkness, keeping it at bay. Even if it can’t eradicate it completely.

“How’s the damage?” Levi asks when he finds even ground to stand on and sees Eren tinkering with his helmet again.

“Not bad. Nothing I won’t be able to fix.” Eren grins at him—not cocky, just happy, even though he looks at machinery and sees it in a way that Levi will never be able to. “Which is good, because the chances of me finding another flight helmet in these ruins that I haven’t stumbled across already is unlikely.” It’s his fourth helmet. He’d broken all the other ones beyond repair, even for his capable hands. “And you can’t exactly do space flight without a helmet.”

“Or a functioning hyperdrive,” Levi comments, offhand, and Eren snaps a glare in his direction.

“I’m working on it!” Eren looks about ready to throw his helmet again, and then decides on cradling it carefully under his arm. “That’s why we’re out here, remember?”

It is and it isn’t. They do scrounge the ruins for ancient parts to use in their ancient T-65 X-wings, parts that are hard to come by otherwise in the Outer-Rim Territories. But Levi also knows that it’s Eren’s restlessness that has them skirting the treetops in the starfighters as Yavin Prime gleams against the transparisteel canopies. Can feel when Eren is less of a star and more like a bird, fluttering in the depths of his bones and longing for freedom in a way that Levi never has.

“To maybe find that one incredibly specific _thing_ that you need to make it work?” Levi skirts the orchids clinging to the walls, knowing just how territorial they can be.

“Not just one, but _two_ ,” Eren is sure to correct, the same way he always has since he first stumbled upon the X-wings and declared he would make them flyable again. Levi hadn’t believed him then, either, and as old as the technology is, they do do what they were intended—they fly, and fly better than Levi would have anticipated. But he still thinks Eren is crazy to believe they’ll ever get them into open space, much less… Well, wherever Eren is trying to go.

Levi runs his fingers over the faded Starbird on the side of his own helmet. He knows exactly where Eren _wants_ to go, but that is a very different thing from where he is most likely to end up.

“And after you find the whatever-they-ares—”

“Hyperdrive motivators,” Eren butts in with a smile in his voice, like Levi’s lack of mechanical knowledge is amusing to him.

“You’ll still need astromech droids. _Two_.”

Eren looks over at him from where he’s standing against an opening in the temple wall, Yavin Prime and the endless sea of trees the most picturesque of backdrops, and Levi stops where he is even as Eren scowls at him.

“Must you always be so… Realistic?” The word, as always, sounds like an insult coming from Eren’s mouth, but Levi shrugs.

“One of us has to be.”

Eren rolls his eyes, and extends his hand. When Levi doesn’t take it of his own accord, Eren grabs him with an insistent, “Come _here_ ,” and pulls him closer to the opening until Levi’s knees are bumping against eroded stone.

“One day,” Eren begins, voice tilted and softened like the beginning of an epic tale just starting. “We’re going to be up there. Out there. Away from this place and… And a part of _something_.” Eren’s hands find Levi’s shoulders, and they both stare up at the sky, beginning to shift from the pale blue of morning to the rich turquoise of day. “I know it,” Eren continues, his words full of every conviction and promise his body knows how to convey.

Levi closes his eyes and says nothing, with the knowledge that he strives to be no one. Strives for no place beyond the purple forests of Yavin 4 and the quiet peace that exists there. That he does not need to bask in the heat of any foreign star, so long as the light of Eren’s is there in the recesses of his mind.

“Come.” Eren breaks the moment with a heavy pat to Levi’s shoulder. “There’s some wreckage near the upper spire that I haven’t searched yet.” He breaks away, boots heavy as he leaves, and Levi opens his eyes and tries to remember how to exist out of the galaxy that swirls through his blood. “You’ll help me find it, won’t you?”

Levi picks his way carefully over the roots that break up the stone tiles on the floor, making it uneven and hazardous, and follows Eren with resigned reluctance.

“I have no idea what _it_ even looks like…” Levi mutters, and this time takes Eren’s hand when it’s offered, helping him up one of the colossal steps designed less for them and more for the behemoths that once worshipped there.

“That’s never stopped you before.”

No. It certainly hasn’t.

**Author's Note:**

> [read, reblog, & like on tumblr](http://missmichellebelle.tumblr.com/post/136922405225/starbird)


End file.
